Contract Ratification
By the time you read this article, all union members who are active letter carriers should have received a ballot that asks you to “approve” or “disapprove” the “NEW” tentative National Agreement. Our “old” National Agreement expired on September 20, 2019. In effect, until a “new” contract is approved or arbitrated, the “old” contract remains for the purposes of collective bargaining.
Unfortunately, however, until a “new” contract is ratified by the membership, letter carriers will not be eligible for pay raises or cost-of-living increases. When the contract did expire, Labor and Management were in the process of negotiating a “new” agreement but that did not occur. Instead, the parties began a mediation process and when that failed, they started preparing for arbitration. In fact, the arbitration process was almost at its conclusion when at the “11th hour” a “new” National Agreement was negotiated.
This in turn required the parties and especially the Union an opportunity to solicit its members to approve or disapprove the “new” agreement. In effect, letter carriers have been working with a contract but have received no pay raises for almost 17 months.
If the contract is approved, there will be retroactive pay adjustments for all hours worked. Letter Carriers who retired after September 2019 will also receive a retroactive check for hours they worked until their date of retirement. Depending on how long they worked, there could also be an adjustment of their annuity.
Some examples of the potential pay increase are as follows: A Grade 2, step “O” letter carrier(top pay) who’s annual salary before the contract expired would see the following increases. As of September 2019, the annual salary was $65,037. A 1.1% pay increase, effective November 23, 2019 would be equal to $715 annually. This would raise the annual salary to 65,752. As of February 29, 2020 the Cost-of-Living(COLA) increase was $166. Thus, the annual salary would be $65,918. Another COLA for August 29, 2020 was $188 or an annual salary of $66,106. The 1.1% pay raise effective November 21, 2020 would bring the annual salary to $66,821 or another $715.
In addition to these increases, there will be 5 more COLA increases depending on inflation and 2 additional pay raises of 1.3% based on what the annual salary was in September of 2019. What this means, is that on November 20, 2021 there will be another $845 increase and that on November 19, 2022 there will be an additional $845 increase. General Increases should total $3120.
Current COLAs and projections based on inflation could be another $1768.
Finally, the parties agreed to the creation of a “new” step for letter carriers. This would be Step “P”. Some carriers would begin earning Step “P” immediately and others would receive it after an additional 46 weeks of work.
The “new” step “P” would add an additional $444 toward a letter carrier’s annual salary. Again, all these increases apply to letter carriers who are already at Step “O”. A letter carrier who is currently Step “O” will potentially see their wages increase by $5332 by the end of the contract (May 20, 2023).
As one comparison, a letter carrier who is at Step “H” would receive $682 effective November 23, 2019. Each additional increase would be similar in comparison to a letter carrier who is at Step “O”. COLAs, however, are the same for all letter carriers.
It is required that all ballots be returned by March 1st. Once the contract is approved, the raises will be applied to the hourly rates and retroactive checks will be calculated for all hours worked. Currently, there is no confirmed date when retroactive checks will be issued. Hopefully, the Postal Service will advise the NALC when they will be issued.
The December 2020 issue of the NALC publication “The Postal Record” on pages 4 thru 10 has information that will explain what raises each letter carrier including CCAs can expect as a result of the proposed Agreement. If you have lost or misplaced your Postal Record, you can recover this information at the NALC website, www.nalc.org. Go to the heading “News and Research.” Then go the heading Postal Record and “click” the 2020 Archives and “open” the December Postal Record. Yours for the Union.
